Calling Veterinary Council of NZ CEO Iain McLachlan: You've Been Hiding In the Shadows for Too Long. NO MORE.

The Spotlight Is Back on You, McLachlan. Where It Should Have Stayed.

From: editor@consumeraffairswriter.com <editor@consumeraffairswriter.com> 
Sent: Tuesday, 9 June 2026 7:38 pm
To: 'Iain McLachlan' <iain@vetcouncil.org.nz>
Cc: 'Liam Shields' <liam@vetcouncil.org.nz>
Subject: INVESTIGATION: Massey Veterinary ICU Staffing and Critical VCNZ Disclosure Failures [RE: Harry Kelly]

Mr McLachlan
 
You have been hiding in the shadows for too long on this matter of extreme gravity – now drawing, rightly – significant national and international attention.

As of course you will have seen, my reply to Liam Shields’s totally inadequate “response” of yesterday (regarding my request for your Council’s provision of the names of any and all licensed individuals involved in any capacity with my dog’s case), was published here and here.

From now on, I require that you respond to my communications personally. If Mr Shields continues to cover for you, I will continue to respond to you as my primary addressee. As a practising lawyer holding a current New Zealand Law Society practising certificate, you are personally bound by professional obligations of transparency and integrity that your subordinate is not. You cannot hide behind a non-lawyer deputy to evade answering questions that directly engage your own professional conduct – particularly while a Law Society complaint against you is active.

On which note, I have three outstanding questions that I wish to be answered individually and separately from the overarching issue of the continually withheld names – and whether or not Massey University’s Companion Animal Hospital’s Intensive “Care” Unit is staffed by any licensed veterinarians overnight.

To cut off at the pass your deflection efforts by directing me back to Massey for the answers to these questions, I remind you, that you were apparently quite happy to accept these two clinicians’ names as being the only ones relevant to the laying of any formal complaints. Of course, I have made clear that that is unacceptable, and I await Mr Shields’s response with the FULL list, so as to ensure the conduct of proper and full natural justice . . . and that such may not continue to be prevented as it has been for now six months and counting.

But since you accepted these two names at all and in any case, regardless of the requirement for the full list, I require you to answer the following questions yourself – as they are directly relevant to the formal complaints that will be laid regarding these two operators specifically:

Question One: Massey's response states that Dr Steffi Jalava's role is "primarily clinical associated with clinical teaching of the BVSc5 student cohort”. Does that mean it was by her own decision that she converted Harry to a teaching resource? (A straightforward YES or NO, will suffice. Answer with a checkbox beside this question, if you will otherwise find it difficult to provide me with a straightforward answer. For the avoidance of doubt, any failure to select a binary option or any attempt to dilute this question with narrative deflection will be formally logged and published as an administrative refusal to answer a direct question.)

Question Two: Since the only "treatment" Harry required was the 24-hour rehydration that was prescribed upon his admission and that I was charged for, but that he was disconnected from after 8.5 hours – what was the specific "treatment" that Dr Anita Shea oversaw? (A simple bullet point list with the list of “treatments” and the specific reason or objective for each “treatment” will suffice. Please indicate clearly if Harry’s various forms of utilisation for student observation and/or student manipulation and participation and/or filming comprised any of these “treatments”.)

Question Three: Which of these two practitioners, or if not either of them, then who specifically approved the third dose (i.e. 9am) sedative/s to Harry, and any subsequent to that? With regard to the 9am administration of sedative/s, what was the relationship of this to the student activities and filming of him that commenced 2.5 hours later? And what was the purpose of any subsequent sedative administrations?

I look forward to the answers that, of course, you would surely already have. You cannot reasonably expect me to believe that the strategy behind the provision of these two names (and only to date these two names) has not been the subject of considerable discussion with Massey University’s Veterinary School Dean Jon Huxley and others, including Massey’s legal counsel.

Notwithstanding, I look forward to your answers . . . but not “in due course”, Mr McLachlan, per your now four-month-old February 26 email. The variations between our respective definitions of that undertaking make it untenable here. In fact, given that you surely already know the answers to the above three questions, there is no reason not to provide them by return email.

In closing, let me take the opportunity to be 100% clear about the following: I do not expect – and will not accept – any reply to this email as being a substitute for the clear question I asked Mr Liam Shields in my below email to him. These two matters are interlocked, but at the same time, separate.

Sincerely 
Jordan Kelly